


I made you

by neverending_shenanigans



Series: What is and what should never be (Darcy Lewis Crossovers and Fusions) [5]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Darcy Lewis Crossover Week, F/M, Mindfuck, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 13:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2230893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverending_shenanigans/pseuds/neverending_shenanigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Darcy isn't sure she's expecting different results. She isn't sure she's expecting anything with him, but she sure has been doing the same thing over and over again. And it's killing her. Maybe madness is contagious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I made you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [barnebucky](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=barnebucky).



> Posted before on tumblr,  
> Written for the Darcy Lewis Crossover Week 2014
> 
> Setting: Post Thor 2 / Post The Dark Knight. AU. Explained at the end of this
> 
> This is the thing I warned you of when I started this. This is a pairing where I have trouble seeing it be either cheesy or cute or healthy. No, really. It is a shipping-one shot, somewhat, but you have a mad character and you have a broken one. I’ve gone full angst mode on this and attempted to blend a MCU and DCU background Story for our Joker in. Be prepared.   
> On a less serious note, I was seriously glad that we have an established shipname for this, because at one point, shipnames will just kill me. I was, at the very same moment, incredibly amused when I found that there is no fanfiction. How does that happen? I don’t know. It was just a very noteworthy thing to me, and I felt oddly proud of the whole darcylandfandom. That’s the spirit, guys. Make up a shipname, push the pairing with a hell of a rat armada of graphics and at one point someone will come along and will actually write it. That’s how we get shit done here.

**I made you**

 

_Hey, c'est la vie._ _Remember me?_

_I made you, dressed and trained you.  
Hey, it's bitter sweet._

_You can't kill me with kindness, I don't buy it._  
Strip down, show me flesh and bone.  
'Cause now I own you.

[I Own you – Shinedown]

 

***

 

It was on a Tuesday that they brought the News of the explosion of the Gotham General Hospital. Normally neither Jane nor Darcy were regular news watches, and it was a mystery why Jane had decided to turn it on this evening. Darcy remembered being in an oversized sweater in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, and Jane calling her with a bit of horror in her voice. Darcy came, and stood, and stared, and her stomach turned. “Don’t you have family there?” The next thing she did was calling her Aunt Madison, the one who lived in Gotham, asking her if everyone there was okay. As she hung up, a reporter showed up, proclaiming that the people now demanded blood, because the police had been unwilling to cooperate with The Joker and had risked so many lifes. As Darcy heard the name, her stomach turned the second time that night. She had returned to the bathroom, and had washed her face with cold water, staring at her reflection, trying to turn it off, turn it all off. Especially turn the horror from her face. She was far away, she was in London, and he would not come for her, nor would he look for her, nor would he find her if he were to be looking.

 

When she had re-emerged, proclaiming that she was making herself some tea, Jane had joined her in the kitchen, her head shaking. “What a horrible thing to do, to blow up a hospital. I’m just glad that your family is safe. What a monster does such things?” Darcy had been lucky to stand with her back to Jane, or else Jane would have seen her grit her teeth for a moment. If Jane noted her tensing up, she probably never attributed it to her words. Darcy’s voice betrayed nothing, if maybe her feeling of weakness. “A _human_ monster, Jane. No is born evil, we’re just made that way.” When she turned, to put the kettle on, Jane seemed surprised at Darcy’s words. “We? No, normal people get vicious and nasty at each other, but that? That’s out of scale. Whatever bad happens to someone in life, it can never justify blowing up a hospital.” Darcy shrugged. “I know. For a sane person, it never makes sense. But we’re not talking of a sane person. And someone made him like that, someone broke him so much that he lost his sanity. He is just a symptom, not the root.” For a moment, an awkward silence followed, before Darcy sighed. “No, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to defend him. I guess I’m just … angry. At the world. You know what, I don’t feel like tea anymore.” Darcy avoided looking at Jane’s face, as she left the kitchen and went straight to her room. She locked her door behind her, because she knew that she had been weird, and Jane would later come looking for her. Then she threw open her window, and digging through her sock drawer, bringing a pack of emergency cigarette’s to light. It was a habit she had picked up in college and had dropped again, before her internship with Jane. But when it came to him, she became unravelled, and she was weak enough to hold unto stupid things like these.

 

 

She closed her eyes, as she put the fag between her lips, lighting it with a match, and inhaling. The taste of tar on her tongue, as she blew out the smoke reminded her of her first cigarette, when she had been eighteen, drunk on herself and on wine mixed with coke, celebrating being alive and having been accepted by culver. She had taken it from his hand in the almost unlit, dark back-ally behind the club. He had shared in her drink, and in her appraise of freedom, had celebrated his own, freedom of mind, the first time in years. He had been talking unintelligible things of a mission complete, of being bored by them, not even the good were truly good anymore, of not going back, but she had not listened. He had made a wrong step, and for a moment the streetlamp had shown her his face. She had shut him up when she had reached out for his face, traced the corners of his lips. He had been taken aback for just a moment, and Darcy had noted it, despite the fog of alcohol on her sense of tact, and had almost taken her hand back. And then he had turned the corners of his mouth up as if to humor her, though it had been a smile that had not reached his eyes. His pretty, pretty brown eyes. He had asked her if she was frightened of the monster now, but she had been too drunk, and she had not really cared. “What happened?” she had asked, and he had told her the tale of having been at the war, at the frontline, and it had been his own comrades who had needed ‘a little fun’. Again, he had asked her if she was scared now, and she had responded with kissing him.

 

 

Darcy opened her eyes again, as Jane knocked tentatively on the door, asking her if she was okay and if she wanted to talk about it. She told Jane she was fine, told her that she was just tired and wanted to sleep. She did feel tired, but she stayed sitting in that window for far too long, even after the cigarette had burned down. The cold air of the night did only distract her so much of the icy grip her mind had on her guts, and sleep didn’t come, kept away by her worrying thoughts.

 

 

It was exactly 02:47 when the doorbell to their little Flat in London rang, and Jane went to open. Darcy was still awake, and she sat up, but didn’t have it in her to go out, already dreading who it was. When Jane came and knocked on her door, she remembered closing her eyes for a moment, unable to fight down the shiver that went up her spine, as Jane told her that someone from SHIELD was here, and that they wanted her to come with them. Darcy wordlessly got dressed, and as she came out she didn’t manage to meet the eyes of Jane. She just let them take her with them.

 

 

***

 

 

 

The woman briefly apologized for the inconvenience that they had to get her, despite their promises, and she seemingly tried to explain to Darcy what she already knew. That her past experience with the man would forever be something that would be held against her, however they called it, and he would forever come back to haunt her, like the ghost he was. The ghost of the man he could have been, at one point. Darcy pretended to sleep in the private jet that they had sent for her, while she really was just trying to avoid to have to look at anyone, or at least not see the way they were looking at her.

 

 

Of cause, everyone here had probably read her file. Everyone of them thought they knew the story of the first victim of the man who came to be the Joker. Everyone of them thought they were in on the big, bad secret story of an Agent gone mad, the Agent that had held hostage the civilian and turned her into a living time bomb, a bit of a gamble. And didn’t they think themselves clever, because they had erased him and his connection to SHIELD from every file. They thought they had the man they called Vincent Singer under control, and that they had seen him through, that in bring her in they would change a thing. Darcy wanted to cry in frustration, because they were so wrong. They thought that she was their Ace in the Hole. They didn’t know half of it.

 

 

To them, Agent Singer had lost his shit after his pregnant wife had been killed by criminals, as revenge for him and SHIELD having taken them out. To them, Agent Singer had gone insane, living in his own delusional world, and he mistook her for the woman he married. When he had abducted her, had turned her into a bomb, it had taken them twenty six hours to find the location he had hid them in. They had no idea what had happened in those twenty six hours.

 

 

She had never told them that he had not been that insane. She had never told them that Agent Singer had never even really had a wife – that the woman that had been killed had been another Agent, and that the man they called Agent Singer was a wild card, and that he had been playing for the other team all along, too. He had not went insane because he had lost his wife. He had been just too far gone already, to frustrated by the things he had done, and had seen others doing. He had had the orders to kill the pregnant Agent that had played his wife, and he had done so, but he had at that moment decided that he was the only who got to decide whom he would kill next. Doubtlessly, when he had seen her, he had on a whim decided that killing she would be symbolic way of cutting himself free.

 

He had turned her into his first mission that he had given himself. She had been the first thing he had done for himself, in that back-alley that night, the kiss, and everything that had followed, and it had amused him to no end to keep up the game of freedom. He had sent out threats, and made demands, never having the intention of blowing something up, probably not even having the intention of killing her, or the intention of escaping. He had just turned up at her place because he had seen her at the window from a roof, and had recognized her. He had been at the door with a broad smile, and there had been blood on his hands, and she remembered having shriek. She had lived in the college dorm at the time, and before she could think twice – why had she never even been afraid, she wondered sometimes – she had grabbed him and pulled him inside. Her first question had been if it was his blood, if he was word, and when he had denied that, she had grabbed his face, unconsciously tracing her thumbs over his scars, looking at him worriedly. “What happened?” she had asked, and the corners of his lips had turned up, and instead of just smiling, he had laughed. “Life happened, my dear. You see, I have given up free will tonight, and I will succumb to the order of chaos.”

 

 

She had seen a feverish look on his face, and instead of asking him what his ramblings meant, she had ordered him to the bathroom, so she could help him out of the bloodstained clothes. He had willingly let her do it, almost as if he had not even been part of it, but as she had left him in his underwear to throw the clothing in the washing machine, he had asked her to use her phone. She had gone to her room to grab some clothes her ex-boyfriend had left with her that he could try on while he had made his call – as she later would find out, to hell his superiors hat he had a hostage and detonations, and would send this whole building to hell. When she had turned around, he had been standing there with the dumbest, broadest of smiles, and just asked her if she thought she was a good person. She had handed him the clothes, laughing it off, and he had put them on, repeating his question. It had been so odd, but she had truthfully answered that she thought most of the time she was an okay person. She tried to do the right things. Then he had told her that he had never done a right thing. He had been told all his life that he had been doing ‘the right thing’, of cause, but right was the wrong concept, and he had been wrong all along.

 

 

He had thrown his head and laughed, a humourless, desperate kind of laugh, and she had found herself scared of him for the first time. When he had come over she had made a few tentative steps backwards, but he had just taken her hands and put them on his cheek. And then he had told her to ask him again, how this had happened. She had done so, and this time he had told her the story of people he had been working for. He had been trained from childhood on to do the right thing, but how should he have known? When he ad been younger, it had confused him, and he had been sure that what he was doing was wrong. And doing the wrong thing violates your identity, you lose yourself, and you become but a broken shadow of who you were meant to be. So he had put a smile on himself, to be able to keep going. And then he had asked her if she preferred shadow or light. It had all seemed so random, and Darcy had been pretty sure that he was either delusional because of whatever had happened, or because he was high on something. And the best thing to do was to humour a high person. So she had told him that she thought that neither actually existed without the other – one wouldn’t recognize darkness for darkness of there never was light, and all that jazz – and apparently, he had thought the answer okay. Without another word he had just simply kissed her, and she would later hate herself for having just given in and kissed back.

 

 

Only an hour later would she finally get what was going on, even as he promised that it all was “just a game” and that she should just “play along”. They were in her bed, entangled in the sheet, him a phone pressed to his ear. She had just sat there, in her bed, naked, at his side, and he had looked at her as if he was grieving. Maybe she should have just been horrified that he had claimed that she was his victim, maybe she should have been worried that he really would blow this place up. But she had not thought it possible. She had not forgotten all of that first night, after all, and even after that she had always been clever. She had asked him whom he was working for. He had asked her if she wanted honesty or if she wanted a sweet story. She had asked for honesty, and so he had been honest. He was working for the government. He was working for the long arm of the president of America. And isn’t that a good man, who had kids put in training programs to learn to kill? Wasn’t that fun for her, to study political science? The science of murderers who just never got themselves dirty? He had killed a full room of people the first time when he ad been ten, in the name of justice. He had laughed, and she had seen the emptiness in his eyes, the bitterness over it all.

 

It was then that she had pulled away from him. One wrong gesture. She had not really wanted to believe it. Curse it on her age, it had been her first year in college. She had been too young, she had not seen enough. She had been still too innocent. He had seen the gesture, and pushed himself up, rolled them over, pinning her down. And then he had asked her if she believe in justice. She had said yes. She didn’t believe that everyone had the same concept of justice, and she didn’t trust all of the people who got to make that decision, but she believed in the concept of it. He had looked at her in scorn, and licked the corner of his lips. “As if the concept of anything means something at all. The theory doesn’t mean anything, if it’s so arbitrary to reality. The concept is just what you call the little fantasy in year head of a fairytale world that gets you off, so you don’t have to pull down your rose-coloured glasses and see the real world, and do something about it.” His words had been full of arrogance, of hatred, but he had been smiling as he had said it, and at her expression, he had chuckled. “You’ll learn that, sweetheart, when they come to ruin you.” And he had tried to kiss her again, as if nothing happened. She had pushed him off, staring at him angrily, and told him that it was better if he left now.

 

Before she had been able to get out of the bed, he had pulled her back, and he had had her wrapped in her sheets like a swaddled child. And he had polled a gun out from the heap of clothes, and she had not even had any idea where it came from. She had just seen it, and stared at the little eagle that she would recognize years later on the uniform of some Agent. “I can’t just yet, my dear. We are not done with the game. You’ll have to sit and wait until it’s over.” So yes, in a way, she had been his hostage for a while. He had read Nietzsche aloud for her, and then he had told her the story of Agent Singer and his wife. And had told her the Story of SHIELD, and the HYDRA, and of cause she had recognized the name. She had just not wanted to, or could have admitted it.

 

Before he snuck out of her place – and she would never find out how he had made it – he made it a point of hitting her right cheek with the gun, and to have her repeat what she could tell the good Agents that would come to save her. She didn’t want there to be one of the HYDRA people in the room knowing that she knew of it all, right? And then he had kissed her left cheek, and he had promised that they would do this again, sometime, when she had seen some more of the world, when she lost her heroes and could see that the world was better of without them.

 

 

She just supposed that the time was now. How ironic that she was now more entangled than ever with the heroes, right? Now that he fought so hard to be a villain. Darcy was only a bit surprised to find the Black Widow waiting for her when the Jet landed, escorting her into a pillbox. Thor had introduced them, but she didn’t know Natasha, so when the woman told her that just a word if it was too much for her and she would get her out it was almost heart-warming. With a weak smile and a joke on her lips, she told her that she could do this. How bad could a mad man be compared to the mad elves they had just faced in London, right? If Natasha saw that her hand were shaking, she didn’t comment on it.

 

 

***

 

When Darcy was brought into a room with a plastic table to wait for a moment, she almost thought she would be okay. They had just brought here because they thought she was important to him, in some twisted way. As soon as they saw that she was nothing more but a toy that he wanted to break they would let her go. A part of her worried, though, that he would keep at this little game. That even now he wouldn’t let it go.

 

The last time they had taken her to see him had been under similar circumstances. It had been just a week after the first incident, and some guys in suits had asked her to please be cooperative and accompany them. They had shown her badges and she had supposed it was okay. Maybe another questioning on what had transpired between her and Singer.

 

Instead, they had brought her to him, into a cell. They had been unable to make him talk, one broad-chested man had explained with all sweetness, and that even, _ah,_ special methods had not been able to rewire him. She had been to horrified at the phrasing to ask what that meant. She had been to horrified by the image as they had brought him to a room, being carried between two man, unable to even stand. He had looked like they had tortured him to rewire him, and for a moment he looked disorientated when he had looked up and seen her. And then there he had been recognition, and he had stretched a hand out for her, and called her “sweetheart”. The men in the suits had nudged her forward, and told her to “just play along”. The irony of hat had not been lost on her.

 

Still, the fact that they brought a supposed victim to her tormentor had shocked her. She had just sat there, her hands in his, and looked at him, feeling lost. A part of her wondered if he had been right in that moment. If this really was supposed to be justice. How could it be? Whatever he had done, it didn’t deserve this. But she also remembered his behaviour in her place, she didn’t just forget that. He was mad. He needed help. And she was sure that she couldn’t be that person. She had tried to get up and take her hand from him, with the intention of telling them that she couldn’t do it, when he had grabbed her hands harder and really looked at her.

 

And then he had brought her hands to his face, placed them on each of his cheek, and his tongue had flickered out, touching her thumb. She had shuddered, and he had smiled. “I remember you.” He had said, and his voice had sounded so different. So shrill. “Hazel. You’re my wife. I love you. Isn’t that funny?”

 

Darcy still shuddered at the memory. He had kept up ramblings, and then they had told her to ask him why he had killed her. He had laughed, and had told her, that he had done it to cheer her up. She hadn’t liked his smile anymore, so he thought it would be fun to make her smile. She would have almost believed his mad antics, had it not been for the one gesture, and the question he had asked in the end. “Say, sweetie-pie, have they ruined you yet? Wanna join me in chaos?” She had wanted to throw up then and there. But he had looked so sincere for the moment, and she remembered his face from back in the alley. The most vulnerable she had ever seen him. She wondered if he just kept asking her because he wanted to believe himself. And that had probably been, why she had went back to him, taken his hands again. “I still believe that there is true justice. Not just as a concept. If there’s one person in the world with a sense for right and wrong, willing to stand up for it, there will always be a justice preferable to chaos. There will always be hope for this world.”

 

 

Darcy wondered if things had gone differently if she had not said that, as the door to her room was opened again, and Natasha beckoned her to follow her.

 

 

***

 

 

 

The room she was brought in now had a table from solid steel that was plugged into the ground. And his hands were chained on top of it. He sat waiting already and Darcy found herself stalling again, as she took him in. So much had changed. It was the first time that she saw him as the Joker, with the make up. She wondered if the other man was still in there, of he had fully tipped the scale to madness now. The expression on his face was a smile, but it was hard to really read it with the make up still on, smeared as it might be.

 

 

Darcy walked over to him. They had put in a moveable chair for her, and had placed it on the other end of the table, out of his reach. She just took it and dragged it over to him, and sat down so close to him that their legs could have touched if he turned his just a bit more towards her. Without a hint of hesitation she reached out, traced her fingers over the corners of his mouth. She almost smiled as the corners of his lips turned up the answering smile that she was probably getting way too used to. He was still making a show for her. She pressed her palm to his cheek, like the ritual it had become, and looked into his eyes, asking the question again. “What happened?”

 

He grinned, and his tongue darted out of his mouth for a second. He tilted his head from one side to another, and she was forced to pull her hand back. “Ah, sweetheart, what a good question. I was looking for that hope you were talking about before. I met one of your precious politicians. The white knight of Gotham. Heard of him? He’s such a funny guy.” Darcy knew that Natasha was watching. The last time the guards had not seen her, they had just seen the ghost of the dead woman who had played the wife. Natasha, though, was seeing her. She could not even pretend that this was not between the two of them, if she replied to that.

 

 

She leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. She felt so tired right now. So tired of all of this. “Yes, I heard of him. I heard of what you did, too. Is that what you call looking for ‘hope’? Killing hundreds of people?” He cackled. “No, that’s just the side-effect. A little bit of death here, a little bit of death there, the sand in the gear. But it’s the side-effect of all good work in this world. Only when someone dies for it is it worth anything, I should guess. I was just making sure that justice prevails.” She felt the hair on her neck stand up as she looked into his brown eyes, and tried to see the man again, beneath all the make-up and the madness. She had seen but a glimpse of him, but now it seemed like it was gone. She wondered if they had already figured out that he was playing with her words from the last time she saw him. She felt positively sick. “You disgust me. Playing with the life of people, like it’s all just a game. Even those who you didn’t kill will be infected by you and your bitterness. You’re not pressed the blade into the hand of the ten year old kid and ordering them to kill people, but you’re not one bit batter than them. Even if hope hit you in the face you wouldn’t find it.”

 

 

For just a second, she thought he would say something. For a moment, his face expression was almost the same serious and tired expression she had seen before. But then he threw his head back and laughed. She got up, and turned to the one wall where she knew the others were waiting behind. She shook her head, and knew her voice was toneless as she spoke up. “I can’t do this. Can you please…?” She didn’t even need to finish her sentence. The door was opened and Natasha came in, nodding with her head at direction of the hallway. As Darcy walked towards her, the laughter abruptly stopped. “Hope hasn’t hit me in the face. It has kissed me and made me smile.” She shuddered, and looked over her shoulder. His face was split in the same maddening grin, from before. “And I will strip her bare, and I will ruin her, and I will take the rose-coloured glasses from her. All of her heroes, one by one by wall, will be corrupted, until she sees the world for what she is.”

 

 

Darcy turned and fled the room, and sank down against the wall, closing her eyes, trying to fight down the panic hammering up in her chest, choking her throat. She felt Natasha’s hand on her shoulders, softly pulling her in an embrace. She heard her arrogant self talking to Jane again. Her words were mumbled, but Natasha heard them anyway. “ _Oh god. I think I created a monster.”_

 

 

 

***

 

 

**No futher reading ;( Sorry.**

**Mini-Note, though.**

Villian and Heroin is a fun thing, but also terrible to write. My hook was the idea to poke at the evolution of madness and monstrosity. The Joker doesn’t care for anything at all – his death, other people’s death, anything. He’s downright nihilistic. He does things on a whim and recklessly, yet deliciously brilliant and brilliantly executed. There are just two things I latched myself unto 1) His constant desire to hold the mirror up for the people, especially the goody-two-shoes people, that all of them are quite insane, and that there is no such thing as a moral high ground and 2) his obsession with batman, the goodie-two-shoe-est of them all.

**As for why HYDRA!Joker:**

He was mad. He keeps telling his stories differently, like he doesn’t really remember where he got his smile from or who he was. We know that he doesn’t seem to exist for the police, even after they have the DNA they can’t find a match. He know a hell of a lot about the inside work of the mob, of big companies and of the government. He was also seemingly combat savy, very tachical and trained with weapons. A lot of that applied to what HYDRA has been doing to their experiments for a hell of a long time. Bucky was their finest result – but what if their mind control had broken someone entirely? Stripped of any empathy or regard for anything -. what if someone broke free of them, slipped away? I just reckoned these experiences could have made someone loose his shit in a very hard way. And at least to me it made sense that someone like that would go ‘chaos and anarchy all the way, baby’.

 


End file.
